Anomalous diffusion in Davydov quantum molecular chain model

Abstract

We discuss anomalous relaxation processes in Davydov one-dimensional chain molecule that consists of an exciton and an acoustic phonon field as a thermal reservoir in the chain. We derive a kinetic equation for the exciton using the complex spectral representation of the Liouville-von Neumann operator. Due to the one-dimensionality, the momentum space separates into infinite sets of disjoint irreducible subspaces dynamically independent of one another. Hence, momentum relaxation occurs only within each subspace toward the Maxwell distribution. We obtain a hydrodynamic mode with transport coefficients, a sound velocity and a diffusion coefficient, defined in each subspace. Moreover, because the sound velocity has momentum dependence, phase mixing affects the broadening of the spatial distribution of the exciton in addition to the diffusion process. Due to the phase mixing the increase rate of the mean-square displacement of the exciton increases linearly with time and diverges in the long-time limit.